Greetings fellow summoners! This is the patch v1.0.0.109 article for League of Legends, the game in which a crocodile and a jackal can be considered brothers without bestiality being involved. This patch includes the greatest skin for trolling yet (I’m still waiting on a Trollface.jpg Trundle skin), some champion changes, a rework to critical strikes and Renekton, The Butcher of the Sands.

Renekton is a suicidal lunatic-type melee carry, suited to running into the enemy team like a screaming madman and doing as much damage as possible before running off, giggling. If you enjoy characters like Olaf or Tryndamere, he’s a good choice if you’re looking for something a little different. He’s a cooldown based champion primarily, with the added sprinkling of his new resource that builds up over the course of fights, Fury.

Fury is a new resource in League of Legends, ripped straight out of World of Warcraft that builds with the use of his abilities. With the use of his passive, Reign of Anger, he can also gain Fury from his auto attacks. Every 50 Fury he accumulates can be spent to add additional perks to his abilities, like lengthening the stun on Ruthless Predator, for example. Don’t focus much on his passive, and see it more as a nice added bonus, since his abilities generate Fury much, much faster.

Cull the Meek[Q], causes Renekton to spin in a circle with his oddball bladed weapon, causing damage to anything in the area around him, getting some health back, and gaining fury based on the number of enemies hit. You can actually gain fifty Fury almost instantly by Slicing into a champion sitting near a minion wave, and then using this. This is his main bread and butter ability, useful for keeping his health and fury high. Take it at first level, max it first.

Ruthless Predator [W], make Renekton strike the target twice, stunning them and resetting his attack animation. This is where most of his single target damage comes from, since you can hit, get the double hit with the stun, and then attack again for an instant combo. The stun only applies after the second hit, and therefore has a slight delay on it, so don’t try to use this in clutch situations. The ability is an applied hit effect that buffs your next attack, so you can apply the buff to yourself, Slice towards someone and then hit them with the ability and its stun instantly. The Furious version of this ability extends the stun, which can be great for setting up a gank, or making a run for it. Take this at level 3 and max it second.

Slice and Dice [E], is his most satisfying ability, or set of abilities, at his disposal. Slice allows him to dash in a direction of your choosing, inflicting damage as he does so. It’s very short range, and at a glance looks inferior to any of this sort of ability in the game. However, if it damages anything as you dash, Dice immediately replaces it in your hotbar. Dice is a similar ability, but will immediately go on cooldown if it isn’t used shortly after Slice. Dice, unlike Slice, can be enhanced when spending Fury to reduce the armour of enemies when you pass through them.

These two abilities can be used in a number of ways, and are great when used in combination with his other tricks, a few of which I’ve mentioned above. The most common usage is to Slice at an enemy Champion, hit them with one, or both of your other mundane abilities, then Dice away to avoid a counter attack. This allows him to harass with relative safety, or dive into an enemy team to pick someone off before dashing away. Another great use for this is the all of nothing, Hail Mary Dive ™, where you Slice at one enemy, most likely a tank or minion, then use Dice to leap headlong into the enemy squishies. This will most likely result in someone dying, either Renekton or them, and is a great way of chasing people down when combined with Ruthless Predator. The last is using the double dash mechanic as a double escape. While fleeing, make sure you are on the wrong side of an enemy minion or champion, then Slice through them, allowing you to Dice even further away.

Level this at level 2, and level it last, as further levels only increase its damage, not its utility.

His ultimate, Dominus [R], works much the same way as his brother’s. He grows in size, gains health and deals damage to enemies around him while also gaining Fury over time. Useful for doing a bit of extra damage, to surcure a kill or just to lay down some AoE damage during a team fight. The extra health is great for quickly using during a gank or team fight to keep yourself alive that little bit longer.

Start out with a Doran’s Shield, rather than the recommended Doran’s Blade. He has more than enough life steal already from his Q. His item build should vary dramatically after that depending on who he’s against. As a general rule, he wants to stay tanky for his first few items, before branching out into damage later on. I have been finding Spirit Visage to be surprisingly effective on him, especially against magical damage teams, as the heal boost works very well alongside Cull The Meek, and the cooldown should never be overlooked. Sunfire Cape is great for assisting Renekton’s already impressive farming capabilities, and is almost a must buy against physical teams. Once you believe him to have become sufficiently tanky, pick up a brutalizer and a Black Cleaver. The former is great for its cooldown reduction, and the latter synergises very well with Ruthless Predator to gain lots of stacks of armour reduction.

For his masteries, you want to be pushing a full 21 in the defense tree, and then spending the remaining points as you choose. I personally put the remaining 9 in offense, but placing them in utility also works well as long as you avoid the mana based abilities. For Runes, I prefer using armour pen reds, dodge yellows, flat cooldown reduction blues and (surprise!) flat health quintessences. This to keep a fair balance between tankiness and damage dealing capabilities. Rolling out with Cleanse and Ghost for summoner spells will allow him survive a great deal of punishment, especially when combined with his ultimate.

A special note to those of you who watched the Champion Spotlight, want to buy Renekton, but haven’t done so yet by the time you’re reading this article – Wait for his buff next patch. During testing, this character was a complete beast, but underwent heavy nerfs extremely close to release. He’s a great champion, with abilities that can be used in different ways depending on the situation, a surprisingly good looking character model and some incredibly fluid animations. However, he’s currently a bit too weak to be viable until his inevitable buffs.

The other changes this patch aren’t as global as the previous two. There have been some minor tweaks to a wide array of champions, mostly likely token changes just to show the community that Riot are aware of who the problem children of League of Legends currently are. Heimerdinger got some significant changes to his ultimate, allowing it to enhance his other abilities, and the new ammo system on his turrets (taken from Corki and Teemo) allows him to set up immediately as a team fight is kicking off, taking away one of his major problems. Caitlyn’s ultimate got an unsurprising buff, and yet is still completely underwhelming. Evelyn got slammed in the face with a nerf hammer to try and curb how effective she is in the jungle.

The increase in the magic resistance on jungle creeps will impact a number of champions, like Evelyn and Amumu, who will find jungling a bit harder after after this patch. It also gives a slight nerf to the speed of characters like Warwick who, while mostly based on physical damage, uses his abilities to supplement his jungling capabilities. It’s a small effort to make jungling a little bit harder, and a bit slower.

The critical strike/dodge changes, that they will now be more reliable and not prone to extreme peaks and troughs, will hopefully make characters like Gangplank and Tryndamere a bit more viable. Their power should now (hopefully) come more from carefully calculated risks than sheer, blind luck. I do wish Riot had been a bit more forthcoming on how the new system works in the patch notes though, but its most likely this will either be explained somewhere on their forums, or someone on Leaguecraft will figure out the exact math behind it.